Our Flower

by S M Matthews

  The family that had contacted the station already considered her to be dangerous and wanted her off their ship. Two of the males have brought her across by transport, they did not want to bother docking their ship. They had cubs apparently, and one brother was staying over there; with their female and cubs.

  As soon as the dock had decompressed and filled with atmosphere the doors had slid open; the ramp on the small shuttle also started descending.

  We make our way closer to the ship, I’ve fallen behind Micka and Acer a little.

  The other group makes it down onto the deck of the ship and I can’t believe what I’m seeing. They have her on a chain, like a dog. One of them is holding the end of the chain high and taut to keep her immobile. She’s topless, with light mocha skin and a head of beautiful dark curls. She’s standing absolutely proud despite her nudity, the baggy trousers she’s wearing riding low on her hips. She is actively glaring daggers at the one holding the chain. I envy her fearlessness for a moment, but certainly not the position she’s found herself in.

  The conversation filters down to me

  “…far too dangerous to just have loose. Especially with the cubs on board. We were glad to hear they’ve been made Class B; at least we're not the only ones having problems.”

  Then the other one asks, “Yours seem calm at the moment, have you gone down the training collar route?”

  Micka’s reply is clipped with irritation, “We will take your surrendered human, then you can be on your way.” He puts his hand out for the end of the lead, “We wouldn’t like to delay you any further.”

  That is the politest way I’ve ever heard anyone say: ‘Fuck Off’.

  The male with the lead shrugs, he moves to hand the end to Micka and as he does the length slackens. “Well, it’s chipped with a translat-” He starts to say, but as soon as she has a little slack she launches herself at him; her hands are claws and she tries desperately to get at his face. He yanks the chain so she stumbles, the other male calmly steps forward and simply backhands her. She drops like a bag of potatoes and I gasp at the cold violence of it, my hand going up to my mouth.

  “I’ll do the Class B report to Homeworld commander, with all due Grace I believe your report may not be entirely accurate.”

  Acer is already calling for medical staff. The male had simply dropped the lead onto her inert form as they turned and walked away. Like she was nothing, an animal.

  We follow her to medical; she was quickly retrieved by medical staff who did an initial scan to make sure there was nothing immediately life threatening. On the way Acer gets confirmation that she does indeed have a translator fitted, and orders the computer to log it and update it.

  By the time we arrive at Medical the woman is groaning and starting to stir. Possibly Galen is already examining her head with a scanner; “There’s a wound somewhere, too” he says to himself.

  “Does she need to go into quarantine?” I ask him, a little put out that she’s not locked in there already.

  Possibly Galen shakes his head, “I know what I’m looking for now, thanks to you Poppy, no one else should have to do that.”

  Oh, I’ve been useful to my people. Go me.

  His brother comes over and covers her with a blanket and I feel grateful on her behalf. They are getting the hang of us.

  She starts to sit and then groggily tries to hit Possibly Galen.

  “I’m just trying to he-” but then he has to dodge her, the second attack was in earnest. He drops the scanner, and when she actually tries to punch him a third time, he deftly turns her and lifts her bodily from the table. He has effectively locked up both of her arms at her back and he carries her, literally kicking and screaming to the quarantine suite. He has to walk with his head held awkwardly because she’s wildly flinging hers back; trying to headbutt him.

  “We’re here to help!” he tries again.

  “I don't want your fucking help you great hairy bastard!” We watch open mouthed as he launches her onto the bed and then beats a hasty retreat; simultaneously ordering the computer to lock down quarantine.

  “Well there’s nothing wrong with her translator.” Acer says conversationally.

  I flinch when a chair bounces off the inside of the window of the quarantine suite.

  “Right,” Micka takes my hand, “we will leave her in your capable hands,” and he starts to walk us out of medical.

  “Shouldn’t we-” I feel like we should try and do something, but I’m interrupted by another ferocious banging noise. “Yep. We can visit later.”

  POPPY

  Maisy’s back! Although only for a little while. Her guys have customers to think of; so sometimes that means they do have to stick to some sort of schedule.

  Micka’s organised for them to come around for evening meal. Everyone.

  Which considering it’s basically a double date, that's a lot of people.

  I’m so happy to see her she has to pry her way out of my hug. The guys have just set up food dishes everywhere and we sit on the chairs and the floor around the coffee table to eat.

  It isn’t long before Maisy’s retelling the tail of her horrible encounter, plus her subsequent experience with being ruled as a Class B.

  “I just can’t believe I walked straight into it. It’s all so dumb. And the whole thing fucking stinks to high heaven. It happened so fast.”

  I can’t help but agree with that.

  Tark asks my guys, “We’re just nobodys really, you guys are Station Commanders, can’t you protest the ruling?”

  Micka shakes his head, “Unlikely. It was High Council.”

  All Maisy’s guys stop eating.

  “Why?” Abner sounds totally disbelieving, “There’s maybe twenty of them, aliens, why are they even concerning themselves?”

  Maisy and I are just watching this go back and forth, like a tennis match.

  “Well that just makes the whole thing even more suspicious,” adds Pate.

  “Thank you Pate!” Maisy gesticulates at Abner, “See! He gets it!”

  Abner sighs, “For Void’s sake Pate stop feeding into this, you’re making her worse.”

  I stew a little bit on what I know about how Kita died, but I keep it to myself. That is definitely not my information to share, especially considering I don’t think it has even occurred to them that there could possibly have been any foul play.

  “Did you meet the human on the space station? There’s another one here now. She’s wild.” I widen my eyes at Maisy and she laughs.

  “You got a hell-cat, huh?” She asks, and I nod. “Well Grace is about as opposite to that as you can get, I should think. She must have a core of steel inside her though. The conditions she’s been kept in sounded pretty appalling, but it hasn’t broken her. And she took to her guys pretty quickly by the looks of it.” Maisy does her trademark eyebrow waggle at me; “If you know what I mean.” She goes on to explain that the Heads of Medical over there were engaged to an ‘honest to goodness princess of the whole damn planet’, only to basically fall in love-at-first-smell with Grace.

  Maisy’s working theory at the moment is that because Princess of the World is on the Council, because of course she is, she’s taken a personal dislike to humans.

  “If they hadn’t been forced into deeming us intelligent, they might have been able to just cull us.”

  My mouth actually hangs open. “You’re joking? Super advanced, all these rules and regulations, civilised people.”

  Maisy shakes her head back at me, “Some of their laws are really old, like really old and really dumb, but they won’t get rid of them in case they want to use them. It’s brutal. Because we weren't recognised and I ‘attacked first’” she does air quotes with her fingers, “If she’d killed me, it would have been just fine. I mean, they still have the death sentence.”

  “Hasn’t actually been used for a thousand years,” Abner drones out, gesturing to the room, like this is an on-going argument between them, and he’s had to say that a lo
t lately. It’s interesting how the translator takes them sometimes, I know he didn’t at all say the word ‘years’ and I know that it isn’t even really the right word, but I can feel the meaning of it. And it literally feels like ‘time for Homeworld to orbit once.’ Which is not the same as a year, not one of ours anyway. And I know all of that, just from the translator giving me the word ‘years’. Amazing.

  “It would still be fine now,” Micka says quietly, but it’s still enough to hush the room.

  “What?” I ask him.

  “If...if they said it was self-defence, no one would worry about it. It’s unlikely there’d even be any sort of investigation. You’re class B, it’s assumed that you could be aggressive at any time so...” He shrugs., “You say that death sentence hasn’t been used for thousands of years but...whatever that one in holding on Homeworld has done, it’s likely to be used again. And soon.”

  “So basically she’s petty and is using her power to punish us because she can? Still doesn’t seem exactly right though does it?” I ask.

  Maisy nods, “I really want to hate them for being tiny-minded and petty and spiteful,” She’s stabbing at a bit of food angrily with every word; “but no, I agree. I just don’t know what it is though.”

  “Do you think...do you think that filming you was the back-up plan? That the goal was actually...”

  Maisy stares at me, it clearly hasn’t even occurred to her that the actual plan was to kill her.

  Tark chuffs out a laugh, “Poppy, you’re as bad as Maisy is. Are all humans this suspicious, you see plots and ulterior motives everywhere you look?”

  My guys agree with him and I turn to try and give them all the shit eye, which is really hard when you're trying to spread it three ways.

  I look back to Maisy and I’m pretty sure we’re both thinking the same thing; it’s not just humans that are manipulative and suspicious.

  We all help to clear everything away, and we make half hearted plans to go and visit the new human. If she’s calmed down.

  I also ask Maisy for her help. I want to show my guys that...I’m in.

  I might have a plan.

  POPPY

  I’d opened Hydroponics. The water is off for one shift exactly, and to maintain the self-circulating system that’s been put in place temporarily, they have put the whole area to ‘hibernate’. At the planning meeting they had decided there’d be no staff present, and as we’d walked here I’d been so worried that they’d change their minds, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone here. I’d also worried irrationally that they'd somehow lock it off. They haven't done that either.

  It’s chilly and dimmer than usual in here. I don’t really know how I’ve allowed Maisy to talk me into this, but she sort-of has that effect.

  I’d gone with her to order the outfit I’d wanted, a fifty’s shaped dress, long sleeves and pinched in at the waist. I’d got them to make the skirt so it was asymmetric, thigh length at the front and ankle length at the back. Soft white leggings underneath, and pliable comfortable shoes. It had to be simple and clean cut, the tailor only had today to produce it. Lucky for me futuristic space station technology can also be applied to fashion. I’d also ordered more actual clothes for myself, to collect sometime later.

  The guys must have known something was going on, they had been so reluctant to leave me with Maisy and her mates that I’d nearly thought the whole thing was going to be a no-go.

  We’d decided at the last minute to ‘decorate me’ here; walking through the station wearing a white outfit might garner a bit of side eye but nothing serious. Walking through chalked up to the nines probably would have set some tongues wagging.

  Maisy opens the box she got from her mother in law and gets to work.

  “I feel bad, that you’re using these on me before yourself.”

  “Who says I am?”

  I turn to her aghast, “Maisy! You got married?”

  She laughs, “No, you’re my test run of using these.” She turns me back so she can carry on chalking, random streaks of colour that she gently brushes so they blend a little.

  “What if they don’t...you know.”

  “Oh, they will,” she says, totally confident, “just don’t freeze.”

  I stand as still as I can and let her work, “They are going on pretty well, I did practice a little.”

  I’m so grateful to her for putting so much effort into this, and covering for me so we could go and get the outfit. I mean they must have known she was lying on some level, but Maisy is brazen in a way that I could never be. When she’d stood and explained to my mates about how she’d planned a girls’ day out, it was just near enough to the truth that they had caved in. I have been clothes shopping. I did go and get my hair done. I have spent the whole day with Maisy. Maisy, technically, wasn’t lying.

  I see long curls of ribbon tied neatly in the box too. “Is that what they have?”

  “Yeah, to ‘capture’ their mate.”

  “I don’t really get any time alone so I haven't been able to actually read about why they do this.” As soon as it’s out my mouth I know it’s a lie. I could have looked this up whenever, if I want to sit in the lounge and read they don’t interfere. I have all the freedom I want. I’d looked it up once when Maisy had first suggested it and only read far enough to realise it was part of a wedding. That was enough to get it relegated to ‘forgotten about’.

  “Uhm...so like, while they were still ‘primitive’ I guess, the females would make them work for it.” She dutifully chalks whilst she talks, she’s got a big area to cover and I wasn’t thinking about that at all when I decided I wanted the skirt. “Their sense of smell is really good right, so the females would use every trick in the book, they used whatever they could to physically disguise their fur and the smell. They'd wade for miles up rivers to try and hide their tracks, cover themselves in mud and leaves and twigs and all sorts of shit. Actual shit probably. Anything so they wouldn’t get caught.”

  “So what, they didn’t want to get caught?”

  “Oh no, they totally did, but the point was they only wanted to get caught by the best. The whole thing was a risk. As soon as the female leaves the birth pack, she’s vulnerable. She needs males to catch her scent and then ‘catch’ her before a predator does. But that’s the trade-off. Better males mean a better chance of survival altogether, stronger cubs, everything is more likely to be successful in the long run, but in the short term, the longer she’s out alone, the higher the chances she’ll get eaten. Their world was a seriously harsh place at one point. And then over time it became a bit more like a wedding, you’ve chosen your guys, you’re just doing this bit for fun. Usually you get chased down, ‘restrained’” She does the speech bubble fingers around the word, “and then they walk you, victorious, back to your own wedding party. I’m guessing you’re expecting some action though so we’re just gonna go.” I nod in agreement, not really trusting myself to say anything in case it comes out like a squeak.

  “Actually, that’s how the brothers thing came about, one male couldn’t possibly hunt, and defend the female, and potentially watch a cub or whatever else, so brothers started sharing one. As soon as that happened, over like, thousands and thousands of years, three seems to have been the most successful at passing on their genetic material. The females somehow changed as well to facilitate this.” She shrugs. “Honestly at some point get them to show you their equivalent of dinosaurs. Crazy. Shit.”

  I realise her prattling away has been hugely distracting, and I’m glad of it.

  “Look, I’m not going to do your whole face, I think you’ll look dumb.” She’s got a handful of sticks and is just using a little on my cheekbones and around my eyes. She finger-combs through the down part of my up-do, I just got the top half plaited to keep it out of my face, and the hairdresser used tiny plaits to create an intricate, glittery ‘net’ over my hair, leaving the back loose. “I think you’re good to go.”

  “That’s great,” I say, ta
king a deep breath, “I can’t do this.”

  “Yep,” She replies, as if I haven't said anything, “gonna go great. Do some jumping jacks or something to warm up, imagine if you get 100 yards and get a stitch!” She bursts out laughing.

  “You’re so not helping,” but I take her advice and stretch and jog on the spot a little while she picks up her chalks and unwraps the ribbons.

  I know hydroponics really well, and I’m counting on knowing it a lot better than my guys. The chalks won’t do anything to cover my smell, but I know where some of the strongest smelling flowers and plants are, and I’m hoping to use that to my advantage. I realise I’ve been sort of planning a route. I must be more sure about this than I thought I was.

  Something beeps on Maisy; “That’ll be them. Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

  I can’t speak, so I just nod. I’m so worried about what they will think of this. Will they follow? Do they want to do this again? Will I somehow be treading on the toes of their first mate?

  Maisy heads over to the door and waits; I find myself edging further away, I still have line of sight, but I will have a few moments of grace while Maisy hands them the ribbons and gets out of the way.

  I edge further, making the absolute maximum head start that I can.

  I see the door slide open, then the three of them come in and speak to Maisy. I don’t know what’s being said but...then she puts her hands out. They all three stare for a moment, totally still. And then all their heads come up at once. I’m too far away to know if they’ve seen me straight away or not, but the movement will draw their attention for sure. I am off running as fast as I can.

  I have a moment to think my choice of leggings was absolutely inspired. I try and stick to the paths where I can, suddenly irrationally worried that I’ll be crucified if I crush a vegetable or break a stalk. I cut across a ‘field’ which is criss-crossed with irrigation streams and I make it across them easily, this leads into a tightly packed area where all the plants are grown in pockets suspended from vertical racks. I know them well, and navigate my way through, hopefully relatively quickly. There’s a patch of dense bushes where I think the leaves are particularly pungent even to me. They are densely planted to maximise numbers, and it does make it more difficult for the other gardeners to make it through the spaces. Not for me though, I fit through easily, keeping low, although it isn’t long before I hear the crashes of them trying to follow.